Intentional Dissonance: A Book About Falling

by pleasefindthis

People become what they want to become. Dancers, dance. Writers, write. Famous guitarists are famous because they’re very good at playing guitar and they’re very good because they play every day and they play every day because they love to play the guitar. People who just want to be famous, just spend their lives wanting to become famous. Or actors maybe. You won’t become anything you don’t actually want to become,”

“One day, I want to own nothing and live there, in that clean white space.”

He wonders if everyone with blue eyes has a common sense of loss, somewhere in the back of their soul, not ever quite knowing what it is but knowing that they once suffered and now would always be marked for it.

He’d once wanted to know what it felt like to be able to talk to people properly, to be normal but he’d given up on finding that feeling, figuring no one ever really found it.

Sometimes he understands everything and sometimes, he understands nothing.

“Ok,” says Jon, not quite sure anything like this is ever supposed to be this easy; but maybe that’s how you knew you were with the one you were meant to be with. Maybe it was always easy.

A man looks down at the red paint on his hands and wonders for a moment if he’s killed his wife and this is her blood or maybe he’s just painted the garden bench red, that’s all.

Step out of your narrow mind for a second and see just how horrible we were as a species: people separated by bits of cloth stuck to sticks with the colours of their country sewn onto them, by national anthems, fighting over patches of dirt that we could only lay claim to because we flopped out of our mothers onto them.”

Sometimes he doesn’t remember what people say, just what people mean. I need this. I don’t want that. Do this for me. I appreciate you. I hate you. I love you. Just the meaning, not the specifics. God had never once lived or loved in these details.

Weddings are about everyone else except the bride and groom. They are an excuse for families to get together and see each other and compare notes about what life is and where it’s supposed to be taking them.

“Too many people mistook envy for happiness. They believed other people wanting to do the things they were doing was more important that doing the things they wanted to do. So they’d edit their photographs and edit their lives and edit and lie until from a distance, it looked like they had the perfect life. But life isn’t something that should be edited. Life shouldn’t be cut. The only way you’ll ever discover what it truly means to be alive and human is by sharing the full experience of what it means to be human and each blemish and freckle that comes with it.”

“Fine. But life is what you make of it. Plenty of people have lived and died, perfectly content, without ever having asked why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.” “Jon, if you can show me a life without a question, I’ll show you someone without purpose.”

The feeling of being happy. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, you must grab it with both hands and hold it close. Let it overwhelm you. Don’t over-analyse any emotion. But remember it. Always remember it.

“I said never apologise for how you feel. No one can control how they feel. The sun doesn’t apologise for being the sun. The rain doesn’t say sorry for falling. Feelings just are,”